Wee Willie Winkie and Other Stories. By Rudyard Kipling. A. H. Wheeler & Co's. Indian Railway Library . No. 6 One Rupee.

Allahabad / London :Published by Messrs. A. H. Wheeler & Co. ; Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, Ld. [1890]. First UK edition. Bound in paper wrappers. Title, series title, imprint details and illustration on upper cover. 21.2 cm X 13.8 cm . [7pp.]/pp.10 - 96. Faded green covers, with loss to corners. Spine with recent repairs. Reverse cover shows an engraving of two English soldiers, one of them playing a fife. First leaf: "New Copywright Works..." verso with; "By the same Author..." Printed title-page. Clean text throughout. In Wee Willie Winkie and Other Stories (first published 1888) are a collection of short stories by Rudyard Kipling. The titles are: Wee Willie Winkie; Baa, Baa, Black Sheep; His Majesty the King; The Drums of the Fore and Aft . ** The Indian Railway Library was an enterprise conducted in Allahabad from 1888. It was a publishing venture of A. H. Wheeler & Co, who "had the monopoly on bookstall sales on Indian railway stations". It was a series of pamphlets intended to catch the interest of railway passengers, and offer cheap 'throwaway' reading material. The series began as a result of an initiative by Rudyard Kipling as he sought to assemble funds to return to England from India in 1888: He approached the senior partner of A. H. Wheeler & Co, Emile Moreau, with the proposal to publish his stories in cheap booklet form. The booklets were to have grey-green cards covers, with illustrations by Rudyard's father John Lockwood Kipling. Six booklets were eventually produced, which sold at the price of one rupee. They were all by Rudyard Kipling, and consisted mainly of reprints of stories that had already appeared in various periodicals for which he was already writing in India. They were all published in 1888." - See wikipedia .